


It's the Best Friend's Duty to Dislike the Ex-Boyfriend (Especially If You Didn't Like Him When He Was the Boyfriend)

by desert_neon (sproutgirl)



Series: Looking In From the Outside [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mentions of Tony Stark, Original Character(s), POV Outsider, someone finally sees Phil for the badass he is, wedding celebrations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/pseuds/desert_neon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD's secrets are out, but that doesn't mean everyone knows every little thing. Most people just skim the headlines, or see quick clips on TV. Kelly's maid of honor never went digging for info, and gets a bit of a shock at the rehearsal dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's the Best Friend's Duty to Dislike the Ex-Boyfriend (Especially If You Didn't Like Him When He Was the Boyfriend)

**Author's Note:**

> When this series was first conceived, it was totally canon compliant. But that was during the first half of season 1 of Agents of SHIELD, and of course everything’s been blown to hell by now. So consider this canon-divergent from Captain America: The Winter Soldier on. It takes place in a world where Hydra existed but were taken out without the total destruction of SHIELD. SHIELD was able to rebuild, with Hill at the helm, with new policies in place about transparency and public info.

It had been a few years, but Phil Coulson still looked the same. A little older, maybe, with a few more lines around his eyes, more deeply set. Still dressed in a well-tailored suit. Still with a small smile as his eyes landed on Kelly, though it was a different kind of smile now.

Point was, Sue thought, he didn’t much look like a dead man.

She’d known, of course. Kelly had warned her, just as she must have warned all the wedding guests who’d met Phil, or had known of both him and his supposed passing. Sue didn’t know what the others thought, but she certainly didn’t like it. But then, she’d never particularly cared for Phil. Not before Kelly had been held hostage, and certainly not after.

She hadn’t _known_. She’d bought the cover story hook, line, and sinker, and she could at least admit that some of her annoyance at his presence stemmed from feeling foolish. He wasn’t FBI. He’d never _been_ FBI. He’d actually been SHIELD all along, up to, including, and beyond his death. 

But that was only one reason why she pressed her lips together as he approached. The other reasons were simply that she disliked him, and that she refused to ruin Kelly’s rehearsal dinner by expressing that dislike.

“Phil!” Kelly had finally spotted him, and his steps sped up just a touch until he reached them.

“Hi.” He enfolded her into a hug and kissed her cheek. “Sorry I’m late.”

“It’s only fifteen minutes,” Jason soothed as Phil let Kelly go and offered his hand and his congratulations.

“I’m more concerned about the fact that you’re alone,” Kelly chided. “Where’s Clint?”

Sue felt her lips go a little thinner at that. She’d only met Phil’s “friend” once. She didn’t remember him well, but he’d been nice enough, if a little rough around the edges. She’d already known, before she’d met him, that he’d been head over heels for Phil. But Kelly hadn’t minded, and so Sue hadn’t either. Now that Phil and Clint were together, however, Sue’s feelings on the matter had changed. She couldn’t help but think that, if they were so happy and in love, then Kelly had been nothing but a place holder, a tool used in Phil’s denial. Logically she knew that wasn’t right, and that Kelly was an adult, capable of deciding who her friends should and shouldn’t be, but it still made her angry on an emotional level.

Plus, she just didn’t like him. He’d rubbed her wrong from the start, too quiet and reserved, always watching everything and everyone. She’d constantly felt judged, even though Kelly had always assured her that wasn’t the case, that his job simply made him observant. She supposed that was true, especially now that she knew he was SHIELD, an organization that had been in the shadows until just a few years ago, and that had only very recently been in the headlines. And, really, how observant could SHIELD agents be, considering they hadn’t noticed Hydra festering within their walls for seventy years?

Still, she forced a smile as Phil turned to her with an offer of a handshake, and a simple greeting of, “Sue.”

“Phil.” She didn’t say more. She wasn’t going to lie and say it was good to see him, and she wouldn’t say she was glad he was alive. It wasn’t as though she wished him dead or anything, but Kelly had _grieved_ , and though Kelly had, apparently, long forgiven him, it was Sue’s job as the best friend to hold grudges where Kelly couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Phil seemed to think nothing of her silence, as he simply turned back to the happy couple and answered Kelly’s question. “He’ll be here soon. A work situation came up— He’s fine,” Phil added hastily as Kelly’s expression shifted into one of concern, and for the first time it dawned on Sue that if Phil was SHIELD, then _of course_ Clint was too. “Everything’s fine, he and Natasha are just providing a little long distance strategy. They should be here soon.”

Something niggled in Sue’s brain at that, something about the name Natasha, but she couldn’t quite pin it down. She turned it over in her head, ignoring their chitchat for a moment and trying to find the thread of thought, to no avail.

“I have something for you,” Phil was saying as she gave it up and tuned back in to the situation at hand. He reached into his inner pocket and produced an envelope, handing it to Kelly.

“We already got your gift,” Kelly protested. “It arrived last week.”

“This isn’t from me,” he admitted. “Or Clint.”

Kelly worked her finger under the sealed flap, clearly curious, and smiled a little as she pulled the card out. When she opened it and read it, however, her brow furrowed. She passed the card to Jason whose reaction was to raise his eyebrows and pull his phone from his pocket. “I’m almost afraid to look,” Kelly murmured as Jason touched the screen a few times, then held his finger in place for the print recognition.

Sue, confused, looked to Phil for clues, but he simply stood there, as calm and inscrutable as ever.

“Oh my god,” Jason exclaimed, and Kelly shook her head.

“Phil, no. This is . . . We can’t accept this! It’s too much.”

“It’s really not up to me,” Phil said, and Sue could just make out the amused turn of his mouth. “I’ve learned to pick my battles. Just be glad the card didn’t explode with glitter when you opened it.”

“ _That’s_ the battle you fought?” Jason asked dryly. “The lack of glitter instead of the concept of an appropriate amount of money to give as a wedding gift?”

“Glitter sticks,” Phil argued.

Kelly pulled Jason’s hand closer and tapped the screen of his phone once. “Or you could have pointed out that doing whatever he did to discover the exact cost of our wedding and honeymoon _might_ be considered an invasion of privacy.”

Sue felt her eyes go wide. She knew what Jason and Kelly had budgeted, and while they weren’t spending nearly as much as many other couples did, it was still a considerable sum. Simple but classy was their motif, and classy didn’t come cheap, especially when the word “wedding” was attached. Kelly had complained often about vendors having an automatic markup when it came to bridal goods and services. Who on earth did they know that would do something like that? That _could_ do something like that?

“Oh, is that the amount?” Phil’s innocent voice fooled exactly no one, and Kelly pointed a stern finger at him. “You try stopping Stark from doing something he really wants to do,” he added in a more honest tone, and Sue blinked. He couldn’t possibly mean the person that first popped into Sue’s mind at the combination of the name Stark and lots of money. “Anyway, how would you give it back?”

“He barely even knows us,” Kelly tried, and Phil shook his head.

“He’s met you both, albeit separately, and he likes you. Plus, you’re Clint’s. In Tony’s mind, that makes you his too.”

There were too many questions in that statement for Sue’s peace of mind. _How are they_ Clint’s _? They’re Clint’s_ what _, exactly? Wait, why aren’t they_ yours _? Shouldn’t they be yours?_

But what she said was, “How do _you_ know Tony Stark?” She honestly didn’t mean for it to come out so rude, or like she couldn’t fathom that boring, bland, reserved Phil Coulson knew the outgoing, extravagant billionaire, but surprise colored her voice. Besides, she kind of _couldn’t_ believe it.

Phil turned to her, steady as ever, and calmly said, “Mr. Stark has many government contracts,” which answered nothing.

Kelly smacked him on the arm for that, but she also hugged him again. “Please thank Tony for us. Pepper too.”

“I will.”

“Hey, hey,” said a new, amused voice. “Hands off my man.”

Everyone turned, and Sue saw the man she vaguely remembered as Clint striding towards them, a gorgeous redhead at his side. Kelly let Phil go and took the few steps to meet them, smiling widely, and Clint hugged her so tightly her feet came off the floor for a moment. “Hey, babe. Told you we’d be here.”

“Late,” Kelly groused, but anyone could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

“Blame Nat,” he said as he set Kelly free. “Something about not wanting the guys to die on this op they’re planning.”

“I never said that,” the redhead said, and suddenly Sue understood a lot more than she had just a second before. Because “Nat” was _Natasha Romanoff_ , the woman who’d been reported on over and over the last few months, the woman who’d helped take Hydra out of SHIELD, who’d testified to Congress about it all, who’d publicly scolded some of SHIELD’s policies while fighting to allow them to rebuild. “Nat” was the Black Widow, and Clint, whom Sue barely remembered as Phil’s friend, was much more recognizable as Hawkeye. “I said without any one of us three, they’d be more likely to cause damage to themselves or the surrounding area if we didn’t at least help them plan. Hi, Kelly. Congratulations.”

“Hello, Natasha,” Kelly said, smiling as they hugged briefly. “Thanks for coming.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it. Hi, Jason.”

“Natasha,” Jason said, accepting the kiss to his cheek. Meanwhile, Clint, who was _Hawkeye_ , was greeting Phil similarly but much more casually, and Sue couldn’t quite figure out where to look or what to think or . . . 

Just. _How?_

Kelly was by her side then, touching her arm gently. “I did tell you he was SHIELD,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Sue replied, because she had. After Natasha Romanoff had spilled all the secrets onto the web, after everything had become available to the public and Kelly wouldn’t get in trouble for telling people, she had told Sue everything. Or, at least what Sue had thought was everything. Clearly a few details had been left out. “But I thought . . .” She shrugged helplessly. She wasn’t sure what she’d thought.

“You thought he was some boring desk jockey,” Clint said, and Sue blushed, even though his tone wasn’t unkind. “Maybe something to do with funding or statistics. You didn’t think for even a second that he’s a high-level agent with his own specialized team, or that he’s basically an Avenger whenever he’s available to join us.”

Sue looked to Phil then, and even though he was shaking his head and wrapping one arm around Clint’s waist, he spared her a small smile. 

“Don’t feel bad,” Clint continued, because she did, and he could clearly tell. “Pretending to be mild-mannered and non-threatening is kind of his thing. He’s better at it than Superman.”

That startled a laugh out of her even as Phil huffed amusedly. “Not hard to be better at something than a fictional character, Barton,” he drawled.

“And are you hiding a supersuit under your clothes, Phil?” Sue asked, making sure her voice was warmer than it had been before. 

Before Phil could answer, Clint chimed in. “Are you kidding? There’s no room for one under this suit, just the way I like it. But good god, you should see the man in a tactical uniform.”

“All right,” Phil grumbled as everyone else smiled or rolled their eyes (or both). “That’s enough. We’re hogging the bride and groom. Time to let Kelly and Jason mingle with their guests.” He kissed Kelly’s cheek again, and smiled at Jason, and then he was leading his superheroes away, with most people in the room tracking their path in wonder.

“Told you he’s a good guy,” Kelly said, nudging her lightly.

“Yeah, yeah. Still don’t like the whole Clint thing though.”

Kelly smirked at her. “Well, think of it this way. Instead of me being a place holder for Clint in Phil’s life, Phil was a place holder for Jason in mine.”

“Hey!” Jason exclaimed, laughing.

“Oh, hush,” Kelly told him, taking his arm and leaning into him. “Everything turned out just the way it was supposed to, in the end.” She tilted her head at Sue. “Right?”

Sue, with a gracious nod, finally conceded the point.

 

 

—the end—


End file.
